Duet
by Wednesday Ghost
Summary: Is ice cream a legit reason to touch other people unnecesarily? Crack!paring, Sengoku Shinji. A dirty karaoke song leads to suckface and Kamio runs away crying.


Title: Duet  
  
Author: Xiao  
  
Series: Prince of Tennis  
  
Pairing: Sengoku / Shinji  
  
Rating: PG-13 (language)  
  
Disclaimer: Prince of Tennis does not belong to me, this is meant for entertainment only.  
  
Notes: A real true crack!couple, I wanted to give it a stab. The band and the song and the song lyrics cited below are not real, I made them up for the purpose of this fanfiction, and they are all copyrighted to me. X3  
  
-----  
  
"DUET"  
  
The thick crowd made the air around them hot, and churned up fallen leaves as they moved, dancing brokenly to the booming bass and quivering, quiet treble voices. The wind was flat, completely absent; not a single breath left its owner far behind, bodies packed so tightly that even if there had *been* a breeze, ventilation was impossible. The outdoor Karaoke Festival was entirely sold out, as the masses of people surrounding them proved.  
  
Kamio groaned loudly, rubbing at the back of his head. Beads of sweat had begun to surface along the nape of his neck, and his fingertips brushed them there, rubbing the salt back into his skin. The clumps of dark red hair hanging over one eye began to dampen, cling to his cheek uncomfortably. He loathed crowds.  
  
"Why the hell are so many people here? Last year it was *empty*!" He growled in frustration, having to raise his voice as high as it could go to be heard over the bass. Shinji, standing quietly beside him, shrugged vaguely. Kamio stared at him in disbelief- the Fudomine genius hadn't even broke a sweat; the elbows constantly jostling and bumping Kamio seemed to be moving liquid around his friend, keeping a magic sort of distance. The long purple hair was smooth from under the hat, and Kamio, looking very disheveled, was suddenly a polar opposite of the other boy, who remained mostly untouched by the mayhem he stood in.  
  
"I don't get it." Kamio turned angrily back the stage, where a pretty girl, foreign-looking, was singing along with a techno song's warbled lyrics. The line prompter was flashing neon green and the crowd, enthused with this young voice, began to rock and sway again. "Anyway," Kamio continued, eyes still on the stage and raising his voice again, "how much longer do you want to stay?"  
  
Shinji shrugged, again, and mumbled something low and soft, which (naturally) was impossible to be heard above the din. Kamio, after years of experience, read the lips perfectly.  
  
"No, I don't want to want to wait till the rap contest!" Those soundless lips moved again, and this time Kamio snorted. "There's no way I'm getting up there. I just come to see idiots embarrass themselves. Although she's pretty good..." he glanced back at the stage briefly, where the girl (obviously inexperienced) was singing so closely to the microphone that she could very well have been tonguing it.  
  
That brief glance cost him. Completely missing the last part of his best friend's drowned-out words, Kamio jumped in surprise when Shinji walked abruptly past him, making his way through the crowd to the stairs, where the previous contestant had just finished and was making her way down.  
  
"S- Shinji! What are you doing?!" Kamio yelled in indignation. Shinji turned just fleetingly enough to mouth, 'I want to sing,' before ascending the steps.  
  
The purple-haired boy was nearly to the top when he realized (thanks to the crowd's laughter) that another person had also been coming up to sing from the opposite side, reaching the stage at the same time. The audience continued to roar with hilarity from the confused, surprised looks both people had plastered across their faces. Shinji opened his mouth to speak, but the other contestant spoke first.  
  
"Ah!" A young man with red-orange hair and a curling, long cowlick in the front stepped forward. His eyes were a startling shade of blue, and warm. Shinji stared. "Gomen, gomen... I wanted to sing..." He laughed. "I didn't know you were already up here."  
  
Shinji recovered and shook his head slowly, as he did everything in life, like being underwater. "No... I'm sorry, I didn't see you either. I wanted to sing as well." His solemn gaze never left the bright blue one, but could just barely make out Kamio's panicking head bobbing up and down in the middle of the crowd.  
  
"Well!" The young man said cheerfully. "How about a duet? Then neither of us has to be disappointed."  
  
"Mm." Shinji thought carefully. "Okay." His words sounded almost diluted, thick. It was hard to hear them over the dull roar of the masses. "How about... 'shadowed'?" He was very fond of the band 'plastic-flower', whose music had become increasingly popular in Japan since their tour.  
  
"Oh! Lucky!" The redhead exclaimed. "That's what *I* wanted to sing!" He walked forward, then, and grasped Shinji's hands, tugging them both out into the middle of the stage. The audience seemed highly confused at this point. "We think alike." The young man smiled warmly again for Shinji, and the Fudomine player flushed, for an inexplicable reason. The judge gave the two boys a questioning look, and the older boy quickly explained to him, "We're going to sing a duet. Shadowed, by Plastic-Flower." The elderly man 'oohed' and nodded quickly, selecting the track from a touch-screen computer.  
  
The two boys shifted around the mike comfortably, overlooking the crowd. The beginning chords of the song seeped out of the loudspeakers, and as the crowd realized what was going on and what band was playing, their cheering suddenly grew and peaked in excitement and anticipation.  
  
"Oh," The redhead turned towards Shinji, who looked reflexively back, as the opening instrumentals washed over the stage. "I almost forgot. I'm Sengoku." He smiled again, that charming grin, and stuck out his hand. Shinji took it, slowly, and gripped it. His solemn eyes brightened a bit, unnoticeable to anyone but close friends and family, and he made a conscious effort to bring his normally mumbling voice to a stronger level.  
  
"Ibu Shinji." He returned the smile, just a small uplifting of the corners of his mouth, a gesture hardly witnessed more than twice since his (dreary?) birth.  
  
Recognizing the approaching first words of the song, both boys turned quickly back to the mike. It was almost a mutual decision, an instant conclusion- Sengoku would sing the higher part, performed by the lead vocalist, and Shinji would sing the guitarist's lower lines. They would both sing the chorus. Neither knew how they managed to figure this out before beginning, but both would later suspect an ability to communicate telepathically. But mostly, it was simply common sense.  
  
"Shadowed.." Sengoku's clear, cheerful voice rang out across the audience. Several women screamed. "Those dark depths of your soul... I'll light this fire.."  
  
"Burn beneath you, burning hot.." Shinji's mellow baritone, hardly recognizable as him when compared to his usual mumbling, was greeted with equally loud female squeals. "Sear a path through flesh and bone.."  
  
"Ashes left to mar your wicked past." Sengoku's voice was growing stronger with excitement. "Dropping fountain pennies, claiming souls to keep.."  
  
Shinji mimicked his impromptu duet partner, raising his voice as well to match the other's in force. "I lick your dirty path clean.." He let his eyes flutter closed, felt the bass run through his body, the treble run through his blood, thinning it. Is this what Kamio's rhythm felt like? "Such a slave I am, to carve your name next to mine..." He opened his eyes and looked over at Sengoku to see him sing his next line. Sengoku's blue blue eyes were looking intently into his own. Caught a bit off guard, Shinji flushed again.  
  
"I've seen your soul, it's blacker than the night." Sengoku was still looking at him as he sang. "That's fine, you sinner's son, our mad love still feels right." The chorus started up as the last words left his parted lips, and as if on cue, a tsunami of female screams climaxed all over the park at such obvious, racy innuendo. The two boys continued to look at each other. The chorus' instrumentals belted on for a good twenty seconds before the first lines appeared on the prompter. Neither young man had to look, though- they both had these lyrics memorized.  
  
"Let's carve our names into the tree." Two pairs of lips moved in perfect synchrony. "We'll fuck forever, you and me." Sengoku's gaze burrowed deep into Shinji's own, and it felt like his lungs would collapse, his heart would explode, his brain would implode. When they sang those words together... it could almost be real. Shinji could almost pretend that the redhead meant it.  
  
Sengoku broke the stare first, turning back to the audience to smile broadly, still the charmer and loving such lavish attention. Shinji glanced back at the masses, too, searching for a red head with long bangs- but found nothing. Kamio seemed to have disappeared.   
  
An arm suddenly slung itself around his shoulders. Caught up in the moment and acting a bit silly, Sengoku leaned heavily into Shinji as the chorus ended and the second verse began. "Your fire feeds me heat, melts me, makes me raw... we're just tangled in the sheets, defy, defy the law..." He sang heartily, and Shinji just managed to pick up his line in time, having lost himself for a moment in the pink flush of Sengoku's cheeks, the warbling tenor of his voice.  
  
"I'll make you mine, you're mine, your shadowed empty soul." Shinji sang, his own words losing strength along with his knees. "I'll keep you caged with my pickpocket want, it's your filthy heart I stole."  
  
Sengoku picked instantly up. "Test the knife on my pale arm, lick the bullet clean," his tone was huskier now. "Love me fast and do me harm, let's cause a fucking scene."  
  
Great gobs and groups of onlookers had begun to sing along, and the karaoke was no longer a duet, but a chorus of trilling voices crying out and screaming. Girls were on the brink of hysteria, their squeals resembling pigs to the slaughter. None of the mayhem seemed to be affecting the two young men, however; their song rang out across the park, untouchable.  
  
It was time for the chorus again. Sengoku looked back to Shinji, as if waiting for the cue, the signal- their lips parted simultaneously, they breathed each other's words in.  
  
"Let's carve our names into the tree... we'll fuck forever, you and me."  
  
The stale, hot air was finally cleaved in two as the long-awaited wind swept through the park, whipping Shinji's hair about his face, lashing Sengoku's cheeks a deeper shade of pink.  
  
"You consume me, hold me, choke me... tie the ropes around my wrists, shut me up with a lethal kiss."  
  
"Mark me yours, I'll make you mine, we'll fuck forever, till the end of time..."  
  
And so the song ended, the last of the instrumentals washing violently over the roaring crowd in a frenzied death. Sengoku, arm still around Shinji's shoulders, looked at the purple-haired boy with a face flushed with elation and a smile stretching from one cheek to the other. "Amazing." He breathed, and Shinji instinctively nodded. Neither noticed when the judge tentatively approached them.  
  
"Ah." The elderly man cautiously interrupted the lingering stares that both boys had burrowing into opposite pairs of eyes. "Thank you for your performance, please step down." He jumped when Sengoku turned abruptly.  
  
"Oh!" The redhead grinned in embarrassment and started to move off the stage. He paused when he realized Shinji wasn't following him, and turned, grasping the other boy's wrist. "C'mon, let's go. Unless you want to sing again?" He laughed.  
  
Shinji wouldn't have said no. But he was at a bit of a loss for words, and without his consent, his feet and body moved forward into the warm invitation of outstretched arms, leading him down into the pulsating masses.  
  
-----  
  
"Didn't you say you came here with a friend?" Sengoku managed to say around his melting ice cream cone. The two boys were sitting away from the festival and its heated arena, on the benches next to a colorful ice cream vendor's cart.   
  
"Aa." Shinji's low voice half-sighed, watching that pink tongue dart out to catch strawberry drips before they fell into a denim lap. He angled slowly back towards his own cone. The blueberry didn't look nearly as good as Sengoku's strawberry- but then again, it wasn't being lavished with wanton attention by *that* tongue. "But I don't know where he went. I couldn't find him, I looked for a few minutes after we sang, and while we walked through the crowd. I think maybe he.." Shinji's soft muttering trailed off in detached surprise as a warm hand closed around his, gripping the ice cream cone. Sengoku had leaned abruptly in and was (wow) *licking* his double scoop, that *tongue*, God, that *tongue* swirling around and collecting the melting drops, inviting itself, welcomed. Shinji stared.  
  
"Mmm, blueberry? I looove blueberry." Sengoku nearly purred as he cleaned off his lips, effectively swallowing the rest. "That's my second favorite." Shinji glanced at the redhead curiously, as Sengoku's hand was still closed around his. But then it was gone, before he could say anything, and the other boy was licking his own (lucky) ice cream cone.  
  
"We should go look for your friend. He might get mad that you left him. What was his name, again?"  
  
"Kamio."  
  
"We should go look for Kamio. *After* we finish our ice cream."  
  
"Okay."  
  
"Hey... you have some on your nose." Sengoku kindly pointed this out.  
  
"So do you."  
  
"Really? Here, get it off.."  
  
"What."  
  
Sengoku laughed at Shinji's blank expression. "C'mon, I don't have a napkin and I can't touch my tongue to the tip of my nose like some people can." He was referring to a former teammate of his, Akutsu, but of course Shinji wouldn't know that. How he himself knew the freaky length of Akutsu's tongue happened to be was a secret, though. (It had nothing to do with being KISS guitarists for Halloween, really...)  
  
"Okay." Shinji leaned in, and before Sengoku could pull back with a 'just joking, just joking', he had lapped at the melted ice cream, once, twice, three times till it was gone. The sweet creaminess came away with a bit of a fleshy salt taste, too, from dried sweat, but when mixed with strawberries and the heady scent of the other boy's hair, it all (strangely enough) formed an aphrodisiac of sorts to the Fudomine player. Sengoku tasted good.  
  
The redhead sat stiffly, looking searchingly into the dark-haired boy's solemn eyes. Then without warning, he returned the favor, lapping gently, with that warm pink pink tongue, and Shinji's eyes fluttered closed involuntarily.  
  
The ice cream vendor quickly moved his cart down the sidewalk a few dozen meters. This was not good for business, you see.  
  
When Shinji re-opened his eyes, Sengoku was smiling at him.   
  
"I got it all."  
  
Shinji kept staring. "Thanks."  
  
A spell of awkward silence settled over the pair. Two ice cream cones dripped onto the concrete below the bench, and two pairs of eyes gazed into each other. It was a good five minutes before Sengoku reached up, and fast as lightning, smushed the top part of his strawberry scoop into Shinji's slightly parted lips.  
  
It looked as if someone had spread lumpy pink cream onto the dark-haired boy for lipstick. He refrained from instantly licking them clean.   
  
"What was that for?"  
  
Sengoku shrugged again. "An excuse. To do this."  
  
Shinji's solemn eyes widened in shock as the other boy leaned in and kissed him, sucking slightly on his bottom lip to get the ice cream, then more insistently on the upper, effectively dispelling all remaining strawberry. Shinji parted his lips unconsciously, and Sengoku seized the opportunity, delving his tongue between them, working from experience to make the younger boy squirm.  
  
A startled gasp instantly broke the tentative kiss, only a few precious seconds old, and the two young men turned to see Kamio standing a few yards away, looking like he'd been bitch-slapped. The Fudomine second year let loose a violent stream of explicatives, and dashed off in the opposite direction of the snogging couple.  
  
"Was that your friend?" Sengoku asked, absent-mindedly licking a fleck of strawberry from the corner of his mouth.  
  
"Yeah." Shinji stared at Kamio's retreating back passively.  
  
"Are you gonna go after him?" Sengoku further ventured, capturing one of Shinji's hands and popping the fingertips into his wet mouth, cleaning them of the sticky blueberry remnants.  
  
"Maybe... later.." Shinji was now staring at the artful way his fingers were being tongued.  
  
"Good." Sengoku grinned and abandoned the pale hand for another sloppy kiss. "At least not until we finish our ice cream."  
  
-----  
  
END 


End file.
